


Tell Me Pretty Lies

by lightbenderlin



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Dad!Sylvain, Felix Hugo Fraldarius is Bad at Feelings, Felix think its all unrequited, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Rough Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Sparring as foreplay, Sylvain Jose Gautier is a Mess, sylvain is a dilf and felix thinks that's very Sexy of him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:15:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27403360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightbenderlin/pseuds/lightbenderlin
Summary: An alternate ending to chapter 4 of Haemophobia.Felix has been dreaming of blood and fights it off with training. Now Sylvain is back on his feet and Felix has to come to terms with his best friend's newfound fatherhood, reckless tendencies, and with how much he still wants Sylvain despite all that.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 3
Kudos: 104





	Tell Me Pretty Lies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Legendaerie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendaerie/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Haemophobia](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23365801) by [Legendaerie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendaerie/pseuds/Legendaerie). 



> Haemophobia is required reading, at least through chapter 3 but ideally through chapter 4 (or even better the whole thing I cannot rec this story enough). Without it their initial sparring match and argument will make no sense.

Felix still thinks of the blood, barely visible on Sylvain's scarlet trousers until he saw it drip from the saddle to the toe of Sylvain's armored boot. Until he saw it in the damp crimson footsteps left on dry stone when Sylvain limped his way not to Garreg Mach's infirmary but to the greenhouse, where his daughter was waiting. This is the thought that drives Felix from his bed every night for every day Sylvain is still laid up with the injury. 

Always concerned for others, never enough care for himself.

Felix beats the tar out of the training dummies until the Professor threatens to saddle him with every repair they need. He takes more care with them after that, but haunts the training grounds like a vengeful ghost. Sylvain's blood drowns him when he closes his eyes. Idiot Sylvain, desperate to be the protector. Willing to die to prove it. Felix hates him for it, for every lost moment of sleep.

Because it means Felix needs to be stronger. He rolls out of bed, tugs on trousers and stalks to the training grounds with his own sword in hand and silently promises the Professor he'll repair the damage tomorrow. Sylvain has a promise to keep, and by the saints Felix is going to be strong enough to make sure he keeps it. If the only collateral damage is a few training dummies, it will be better than he'd hoped for. 

There's flickering torchlight and a dancing shadow in the room before Felix arrives. He hesitates in the doorway, wondering what other fool is awake in the middle of the night. Maybe Catherine. Or the Professor, who lately seems as sleepless as he is. 

It's neither woman. Felix holds his breath and watches Sylvain flicker around a training dummy, striking with the training lance and dodging away, avoiding imaginary blows. He watches for the better part of an hour wondering where that agility went when Sylvain was getting hacked at on a battlefield, and tells himself he's critiquing Sylvain's form, not appreciating it. 

The lie stretches thin when Sylvain breaks to dump a pitcher of water over his head and finally notices Felix lurking in the doorway. 

Sweat and water drip from his clothes, his hair, his jawline. If Felix has to lean more heavily against the door, breath punched out of him and knees like the tart jellies Annette likes, Sylvain will never know from that distance. His mouth goes dry. He clenches his fists and frowns and locks down how badly he wants to lick the water off Sylvain's neck behind iron gates. 

"How long have you been there?"

Too long. Annoyed with himself, Felix stalks across the grounds toward Sylvain. "Long enough to see bedrest has ruined your skills," he spits. Then, wrenching the sword from its sheath, "Spar with me. I'm a better match than a training dummy." 

Sylvain pushes damp hair out of his face. His shirt clings to his chest, and Felix tears his eyes upwards only to watch water trail down Sylvain's wrist. "Yeah?" He wants to lick that off too.

"I hit back."

"I know you do," Sylvain purrs, confident, lascivious. Felix answers with a swing of his sword. Sylvain knows him well, too well, laughing as he counters with the lance, knocking Felix's blade aside and lunging for a strike of his own. It's infuriatingly easy to sink into their old familiar dance: Sylvain, steady as stone, pivoting and lashing out at Felix who flutters nimbly around him like a well-armed bird. If he notices the blade is true--a honed edge against his blunted practice weapon--Sylvain says nothing. Felix doesn't give him the chance to; he spars with Sylvain like he's trying to kill him. 

He couldn't, can't, though some days he wants to. Too much at stake now, with the Empire looming over them. Sylvain's too good a fighter to lose. (Sylvain's too important to Felix to lose, though he denies it with impressive vehemence. He thinks Sylvain is the only one it fools.) 

Sylvain is better than Felix had expected him to be after a week of enforced bedrest. His tongue trips over how to tell Sylvain he's proud of him. What comes out has the same sharp edge as his sword, "It's good to see you've finally decided to work hard, for once in your life."

"What choice do I have?" Sylvain answers, too serious by half. 

"Leave?" Felix could never, but Sylvain... Well, Sylvain's trail of broken hearts jumps unbidden to Felix's mind. "You're good at that, apparently." 

A piece of wood flies off the shaft of Sylvain's lance, chipped away by the sharp edge of Felix's sword. Felix follows it with a glance, but snaps his gaze back to Sylvain. No rebuttal comes. No parrying strike. Sylvain stares over the wall of their crossed weapons. Just hurt. Just angry.

"No." Sylvain steps into their dance again, not a rock now but a wave, cresting and falling and fluid. It takes two hands on his sword for Felix to hold when Sylvain closes with him. Sylvain spars like Felix is trying to kill him, and that feels perversely good. Sylvain meets him, presses the advantage of his height and leans on the lance, leans in close. "I won't leave, Felix."

Felix pretends the flush on his face is exertion and spits, "Good." He breaks their close, backs off a pace, but holds Sylvain's gaze. "It would be a pity to work so hard for your daughter just to show her you're a coward." 

"My daughter..." Sylvain twirls his lance idly. Felix watches it, waiting for a strike that never comes. Sylvain keeps talking. His words do more to throw Felix off balance than any strike so far. "Enfys is... a big part of it, sure. But she's not the only one here I won't leave, Fe." Felix narrows his eyes.

"Of course," he says scathingly. What else would keep Sylvain around but the promise of sex? Felix wonders if the girl is as emotionally detached as Sylvain, or if he's still a heartbreaker in the middle of a war. He wonders if she knows Sylvain is already a father. "What's her name, Sylvain? Or can you not remember it either?" 

"You really think so little of me?" Sylvain pouts and saunters closer, still spinning the lance like some kind of performance. "I'm serious this time. I think I might marry him."

"If you flourish that stupid thing on a battlefield, you're not going to live long enough to ask him," Felix sneers. He strikes to disarm, but Sylvain had adequate warning. He adjusts his grip on the lance and parries with bravado. Felix catches up to the words they said. "'Him'?"

"Enfys has a Crest." Sylvain still can't say the word without a look of distaste, like he was offered spoiled food. "She... is my heir. I am not obliged to marry a woman who can make them."

Felix had never even considered that, standing barely three feet high, the child had given Sylvain something Felix had never been able to: a modicum of freedom from the Margrave and Margravine's overbearing personal politics. Something light rises in his chest at the revelation. Felix refuses to name it, because it will only disappoint him in the end. He tamps it down and frowns in Sylvain's direction, eyes following the flashing point of his twirling lance.

Sylvain is still speaking. "I can't do anything about it now," he says mournfully, circling Felix. Brown eyes watch him like a hawk, a seriousness in discord with his flippant tone. Felix turns with him, just as watchful. "I think he'd hit me if I tried anything before the war is over."

Felix fumes, impossibly angry because  _ of course _ nothing could make Sylvain change. Not war. Not fatherhood. Still as distant and feckless as always, now Felix finds him careless enough to use his own child to secure his happiness. He lashes out, words and sword both. "He should! You have a war to fight and a daughter to raise," Felix spits. "It's not the time for sex and frivolity." The worn out lance finally snaps against Felix's spite and steel. He watches the broken piece spin off into the sand.

The wooden haft of Sylvain's lance, what's left of it, hits him in the small of his back while he's distracted. His brain replays the last few seconds in double time: Sylvain stepping close as the bladed end of the lance flies away, taking his focus with it. That stupid flourish again but it puts the pole behind Felix's back and Sylvain can bracket him with weapon and body as he takes his grip again on the shortened shaft. Felix throws his arm out, holding his blade away from their unarmored bodies as Sylvain pulls him in. Pressed together knee to chest with the lance preventing his retreat, Felix hitches a startled breath and looks up into Sylvain's eyes, warm brown and half closed and so so close.

"Who said anything about sex?" Sylvain asks.

"I-- You--"

"Didn't say that. But if I do  _ try anything _ ," Sylvain says, and Felix can feel his voice rumble low through his chest, "anything at all... what would you do?" 

Hit him. He should hit him; punch the tiny victorious smile off Sylvain's lips that he can't stop glancing towards. Distantly, Felix hears the sword fall from his nerveless fingers to the sandy floor. A soft thud overshadowed by his own heart beating against his ribcage. He stares at Sylvain, and breathes shallowly, shakily. His emotions churn like a river; anger, fear, desire, shame, all a muddied mess even insomnia could not temper. His iron floodgates whittle to filigree when Sylvain's gaze dips to Felix's mouth. Felix sways forward. 

"This."

He grabs Sylvain by the damp collar of his open shirt and  _ hauls _ .

Sylvain's surprise is evident, clearly written across his face as he falls. He drops the broken half of his lance. Felix feels it hit his heels and roll away before Sylvain grips his wrists and pulls him down too. He lands on top of Sylvain who coughs out his breath when he hits the ground but heaves Felix to the side and still manages to slam him into the dirt. 

"That was dirty," Sylvain accuses breathlessly, pinning Felix by the shoulders with his forearm. 

"No. This is," Felix pants. He grabs a fistful of sand and turns his face away as he throws it in Sylvain's. The pressure across his chest eases with Sylvain's emphatic cursing. He surges up as Sylvain reels back, scrubbing at his face, and throws himself into Sylvain's chest.

Even half blinded, Sylvain still has good reflexes and smart reactions. Felix barely has him pinned before Sylvain rolls them to the side. They roll twice more, each of them vying for the upper hand. Sylvain is still trying to get sand out of his eyes, and Felix manages to pin Sylvain down and sit on his back. When Sylvain tries to sit up, Felix leans his weight forward, grabs a fistful of Sylvain's hair, and shoves him back down. 

"Yield, Sylvain," Felix demands.

“Now you want me to give up?” Sylvain fights to get a hand to his face to wipe the last of the dust from his eyes. "Weren't you just so happy that I wasn't going to run away? Which, by the way, is rich coming from  _ you _ ."

Felix pulls Sylvains hair, tugs him to the side to face him. "The fuck is that supposed to mean?" He snarls. 

"It means," Sylvain says with an edge, "that maybe I fool around, but at least  _ I'm _ not running from my responsibilities."

"Oh? And I am?"

"Yeah, Fraldarius. You  _ are, _ " Sylvain snaps. "Your family is the  _ Shield of Faerghus, _ but you'll run off to play mercenary because that wasn't supposed to be  _ you _ right?"

Felix bristles. "You don't know what the hell you're talking about."

"I don't?" Sylvain heaves against Felix's weight and dumps him on the ground. He dusts himself off while Felix scrambles to his feet, ready for a strike that never comes. "I am nothing but my  _ Crest _ to my parents, Felix! They care about what I represent, not me, and that never stops hurting but you know what? I still do my saints-damned duty to them, because it's a duty due to Faerghus."

"I know!" Felix yells. " _ You  _ know that I know it, and it cost me my brother, my  _ friends _ to this stupid war. But for  _ what _ , Sylvain? Tell me that. What has honor or chivalry or fealty ever done except tear people from us?"

"You're right," Sylvain says. Felix knows that tone is meant to be charming, disarming, but if anything, his agreement puts Felix more on alert. "It cost me my brother, my parents' love-- oh wait, no that was my Crest that did that! Honor and fealty gave me friends, a new  _ better _ family, people I care about and won't leave to die on a battlefield no matter how  _ stupid _ I think this war is." 

Sylvain advances with his diatribe, until Felix is backed against the fence and Sylvain can lean in close and whisper fiercely, "Chivalry cost me friends and  _ brothers, _ too, Fraldarius. But I've got you, and our classmates, and everyone in this monastery because of it. The only good thing my Crest gave me is… is Enfys. And because she has this curse, I'm finally free, and you know what? I'm going to protect her like I promised, and I'm going to marry whomever I  _ want _ once this war is done, because my parents can finally stop breathing down my neck about our damned  _ lineage _ \--"

The slap takes them both by surprise. It rings through the salle while the mark on Sylvain's cheek brightens to match his hair. "You…" Felix's voice shakes, his head shakes. His thoughts try to catch up to the words he had tried to stop listening to, to put words to the emotion in his chest. Not a river anymore. A spark to a blaze. "You disgust me," he says. "All that talk of honor and chivalry, of these women who want to use you for your Crest, but you used her right back and all for a Crested child so that you can do as you please." Felix scoffs. "How are you any better than your parents?"

Sylvain looks at him like Felix had just impaled him on his sword. His mouth opens, closes, words failing him as his face pales to Felix's accusation. His silence is damning.

Felix steps forward and grabs Sylvain by the lapels of his shirt. "What was her name?" He demands. "That woman you bred like a show pony to give you an heir. Tell me you remember it." 

Sylvain retreats, shaking his head. "I don't--"

Felix scoffs and interrupts, "Of course not. What did she look like, then? Surely you remember that?" He advances, shaking Sylvain, and bile sits uncomfortably in the back of his throat because he already knows Sylvain's answer.

Sylvain retreats. "No," he whispers. "I don't. I never--"

Felix laughs, or chokes, the sound harsh and angry. "Right," he spits. "Five years is a long time. You probably forgot what  _ we _ all looked like, too."

"No!" Sylvain grabs Felix's wrists, not to tear him away but to keep him close. "Never," he swears, alarm tinting his denials. "I would never forget a single thing, Felix, because I  _ know you _ \--" 

"Well, you  _ knew _ her pretty well," Felix snarls, still driving Sylvain around the hall with fists caught up in the damp fabric of his shirt. "That kid is proof of that."

"She's not--" 

"You can't deny a child, Sylvain!" Felix yells, uses what little give he can get to shake Sylvain again, to beat his fists against Sylvain's chest. And then he says the worst thing he can think of: "Saints! I thought everything with Miklan would have fucking taught you that." 

Felix bites the bladed weapon of his tongue and apology turns to ash in his mouth in the wake of his own cruelty. He feels the catch of Sylvain's breath in his own chest, the white-knuckled tremble where his hands still clutch Felix's wrists. He watches Sylvain's expression twist, crumple like wet paper. Sylvain retreats. Felix advances, demanding still, as always.

Then the world turns sideways, and his only warning is the widening of Sylvain's eyes as his axis tilts first.

Felix rolls twice before he comes to a stop. He's caged in, his prison tangled about his legs and bracing its arms around him, keeping him tucked safely against its chest. "You okay?" Sylvain asks, carefully unfolding himself from around Felix. Felix stares.

"Fe? Hey, I know you didn't hit your head just now. Talk to me, Felix."

"The fuck did you trip over?" He asks, the first thing that comes to mind as he tears his eyes away from Sylvain's concerned face. He can't see past the broad wall of Sylvain's chest.

"Uh…" Sylvain cranes to look. Felix bites his lip as the contortion brings Sylvain's knee close to the last place Felix needs him to put it right now. All the words that passed between them, and Sylvain will still shelter Felix from something as harmless as a fall. And Felix can't forget that for all Sylvain infuriates and confuses him, Sylvain is still the most loyal friend Felix has ever had. 

There's firelight in his hair and it catches on his eyelashes like a series of tiny candles when he turns back to Felix. For all Sylvain throws himself into danger with abandon, for all the scars that litter his body, permanent artifacts of the war, Sylvain is still the most beautiful man Felix has ever met. Felix is only half listening to whatever Sylvain says about the broken lance. He's too busy frowning at Sylvain's mouth as he forms the words and wondering why the hell he had ever allowed this infatuation to fester. "Felix?" It was only ever going to hurt him. "Felix, did you hear me?"

"Yeah, something about the lance," Felix says, annoyed and distracted. Then, "Who is it?"

"Who?" Sylvain looks away again, toward a door that Felix can't even see. "There's no one--"

"The man you intend to marry now that you have your chance at freedom," Felix snaps, tugging Sylvain's attention back down by his lapels. His own turn for a white-knuckled grip. "Who is he?"

Sylvain offers only an incredulous, broken laugh. When he tries to push away, Felix holds him there. Sylvain laughs that brittle laugh again. "Make up your damn mind, Fraldarius. Am I a free man or a sack of shit like my folks?" 

"Tell me his damn name, Sylvain," Felix demands, tone promising violence. 

"Why?" Sylvain hisses. "You wanna be there, Fraldarius? Going to walk me down the aisle? My father sure as hell won't be there for that."

_ No you idiot, I want to be at the end of the aisle waiting for you _ . Felix swallows the admission down. After all he's said tonight, he can't say that. Sylvain isn't done. 

"Or are you gonna give a toast to remind everyone the day's celebration is because I was willing to throw a child to the wolves?" 

"You can't throw her to the wolves if you die taking axes on the battlefield for your… sweetheart." Felix spits the pet name as if it was as surgery a concoction as the word implies. Sylvain stares. Felix fixes his eyes on the unsteady bob of his Adam's apple when he swallows. Watching Sylvain's hurt turn to hope feels like twisting the knife.

" _ Shield of Faerghus,  _ right?" He continues bitterly. "Maybe I don't know my duty, but I know where my loyalties lie, Sylvain." With him, always with him, ever since they made a promise as children. But Sylvain has other promises to keep, and it is foolish to think he would put Felix's before them. "You aren't a knight errant, you don't have to do this alone," Felix reminds him. "There's a lot of us in this damn army. Let us help you--let  _ me  _ help you protect him." 

He swallows, takes a breath. "Who is he, Sylvain?" Asking again feels like admitting defeat. 

"It's… He is, ah..." Sylvain tries his sentence two times over before he just stares down at Felix. Felix finds himself doubly pinned down: once, by Sylvain's body above him. Twice, by the look in his eyes, like Felix had just delivered him the stars. Warmth and light comes off him, shining in his brown eyes and through his hair like a hearth fire, like the sun of Felix's universe. Only the Goddess knows he is still sentimental enough to feel his heart break over the beauty of this man. 

Sylvain leans down, and his voice is a broken hopeful thing as it whispers Felix's name. He doesn't finish that sentence either. He just leaves hot breath in that narrow space between them and Felix decides, in that moment, to hell with propriety and to hell with this war. He won't have a chance if he waits until the damn thing is over. 

Felix releases Sylvain's shirt and twists his hands into Sylvain's hair again and pulls him down even as he arches up to meet him. It's not a  _ good _ kiss, not by any means. Too hard and too desperate. Too much teeth. Sylvain moves to keep his balance and find an angle for the kiss that doesn't leave his nose crushed against Felix's and that's when Felix breaks. Sylvain's knee presses into his groin and Felix ruts against the pressure like a desperate teenager, tearing himself from the kiss with a throaty moan. 

" _ Felix _ ," Sylvain starts again. He's close enough Felix can hear his uncertain swallow. 

"This man you want to marry, did you make him any promises?" Felix demands. 

"Just one, when we were children." 

Felix files that away, because if he thinks too much about who Sylvain knew when they were children he is going to kill him after all. 

"Then what I want from you…if I help you protect him, I want you to fuck me." Easier to be just another person that has used Sylvain, and be used right back.

"I thought my end of the bargain was to stay alive?"

"You already promised someone that," Felix says fiercely. He doesn't say  _ you promised me _ . Sylvain was making that promise to more people now, to people who mattered more than Felix. "I'm going to help you, but first I want you to fuck me like you fucked her. Like you want me to have your fucking kid."

Sylvain chokes on whatever he wants to say and for a moment Felix thinks he said too much. Then Sylvain leans lower over him, pushes his knee more insistently into Felix until Felix is biting his tongue in an effort to keep himself from grinding against it, from mewling into Sylvain's neck. Sylvain kisses him a second time, better than the last time. Slower but just as hungry, Sylvain's tongue quests forward until Felix loosens his jaw enough to let him in. And then Felix can't tell which of them is sighing through their nose or taking hasty gulps of air just to keep the kiss going. 

Sylvain breaks first. "I don't think the Goddess loves either of us enough to work the miracle it would take to get you pregnant," he says breathlessly, and then reconsiders. "Or hates us."

"You'll just have to try hard then," Felix quips. 

"Yeah, yeah…" There's a sweet kind of relief when Sylvain slides a hand up the back of his shirt and kisses him again. It's not until Sylvain grinds against his thigh while he struggles blindly with the buttons on Felix's shirt that Felix realizes he'd been half afraid Sylvain would refuse him. 

He doesn't. He hasn't yet, in all their years together. Sylvain kisses him and kisses him, pushes his shirt open and runs his fingers over Felix's ribs. Felix turns his face away and doesn't bother to smother the gasp that escapes him when Sylvain immediately finds a spot on his neck to latch his mouth. He tugs Sylvain's shirt out of his trousers and rucks it up as high as he can get it. The damp linen clings to skin. Can he be jealous of a wet shirt? "Want this off," he grumbles, impatient. 

Sylvain  _ laughs _ at him. "You don't want to go somewhere more comfortable?" Felix tugs again at his shirt. 

"Here's as good as anywhere. No one else is stupid enough to come in at this time of night." It's the truth as much as it is an excuse. 

"Okay, but we're going to get filthy?"

"We already are." 

"You're impossible." 

Felix doesn't know what to make of Sylvain's tone. There's an edge to it, something around the fringes of his smile. As usual, when faced with things he doesn't know, Felix bull rushes straight through. 

"Practical," he disagrees. "You want everyone to hear? The walls on those rooms are damn thin." Felix pauses, and then sneers, "Someone you want to make jealous, Gautier?"

"I'm not the one who wanted to get fucked into the dirt," Sylvain returns, tone still unreadable. "Why are we doing this then?" He asks, still ignoring Felix's insistent tugging at his clothes. He shifts to put his hips between Felix's thighs and rocks against him. A revelation of his own interest that leaves Felix whining in the back of his throat. A promise of what's to come, if Felix can get his foot out of his mouth. Sylvain unsnags Felix's hands from his shirt and pins them down, one at a time. "Well?"

_ Because I want you so bad it makes me crazy _ , Felix thinks.  _ Because I want you to want me just once. _

What he says is, "Because I'm a mercenary. I don't do shit for free." 

Felix watches Sylvain's smile become the fake, plastered thing he offers to all his one night stands. He draws a breath to take it back, but Sylvain laughs that soft shattered sound. It's too late to offer a confession. 

"At least you're honest, Fe." Sylvain draws back. Felix stares while he strips his shirt off. His lying mouth goes dry at the sight, and drier still when Sylvain skates his fingertips from Felix's knees over his hip bones and his chest to grab him by the chin. "I'll whore for you, Felix," he says, voice hard, "but if we're doing it here, you're gonna have to be on your knees. I'm not fucking you on your back in the dirt." 

"But first," he continues when Felix moves to turn, and presses two fingers against his lips, "I don't have anything here to slick you up with so we'll have to make do."

Felix opens his mouth obediently and sucks on Sylvain's offered fingers until his mouth isn't dry and those fingers are soaked. He isn't good with words, not the way Sylvain is. Sylvain is the one with the silver tongue. Sylvain is the one that could end--or start--wars with the things that come out of his mouth. Felix doesn't know how to tell Sylvain he is a lot of things to Felix, but never a whore, so he puts his mouth to a simpler task. 

Sylvain slips his hand into Felix's pants and his touch startles a moan out of him. " _ Saints _ , you sound as pretty as you look, Fe," Sylvain mutters, giving him one firm stroke. "Bet you'd look fantastic sucking my cock." 

Felix grunts an affirmative, and doesn't even mind being called pretty when the praise is coming from Sylvain. He sucks harder on Sylvain's fingers. It's not like he never considered it. Not like he never shoved his own fingers as far into his mouth as he could fit them and imagined it. The weight, the feel, the taste. He didn't have to imagine the first two anymore. Sylvain withdrew Felix's cock from the confines of his trousers and took them both in hand. Felix moaned louder and spread his legs wider, craning to look while he kept Sylvain's fingers in his mouth. 

" _ Fuck _ ." Indeed. Sylvain thrusts into the tight circle of his fist and the friction of Sylvain's cock dragging against him, his hand stroking with the movement of his hips, drives Felix from half mast to fully erect with alarming speed. Felix thrusts helplessly up into Sylvain. He reaches down, finally moving his hands from where Sylvain had left them, to add his hand beside Sylvain's. To keep them pressed together, base to tip, on every slow shift of Sylvain's hips. 

Sylvain groans, wordless for once, the moment Felix touches him. His pace stutters, tiny helpless jerks that leaves them both moaning for more, and Sylvain leans forward, curling inward like a bow pulled taut. Too much weight, suddenly, on the fingers pressing against his tongue. Felix chokes, grabs Sylvain’s wrist and pulls the intrusive fingers out.

“Shit, Felix. I’m--”

“You put this hand on the ground, and I’ll cut it off,” Felix threatens. The effect is ruined by the hoarseness of his voice and the wet cough that follows, but he holds Sylvain’s wrist aloft as he pants through the spasms in his throat. Sylvain crashes into him mouth first, and Felix has no clue what he’s done to warrant such a reaction but he’ll take the wet, ravaging kiss with delight. 

“Turn around,” Sylvain whispers, halfway between a plea and a command and Felix is happy to oblige. He kneels on his own shirt and knows he’ll never get the dirt stains out of it after this. Sylvain pulls his pants down around his thighs, breath ghosting warmly over newly exposed skin. Felix doesn’t care about the shirt. The war has ruined most of his clothes with filth and blood and this, at least, will be a good memory when he has to face what remains.

Sylvain’s breath settles over the curve of his ass like steam from the baths and Felix, all at once, feels disastrously exposed. “Hurry up,” he orders, and his impatience is rewarded by Sylvain nipping his cheek and laughing at the soft yelp it draws out of Felix. “Sylva--ahn…” Felix’s complaint is lost to a groan when Sylvain finally pushes a finger inside. It’s colder than he expected, counterpoint to the warmth of Sylvain's other hand on his hip, but heat still crawls up Felix’s chest. He buries his face in the first thing at hand—Sylvain’s discarded shirt.

It smells of sweat and the perfume that might be a cologne Sylvain wears or might just be what he smells like. Felix has never been brave enough to ask. Not in the least because if he discovered it was something Sylvain wore, he didn’t trust his fragile grip on this infatuation to prevent him from buying it for himself. The odor is, in any case, a grounding force as Sylvain adds a second finger beside the first. His free hand spreads Felix’s cheeks, thumb brushing against his hole as it pulls them apart and long fingers curling around Felix’s hip. He knows without looking that Sylvain is staring. He can feel the force of his gaze as acutely as the fingers stroking inside him. 

“Goddess, you really want this so bad, Fe…” Sylvain sounds almost reverent. “You’re taking me so easy. Like you can’t wait for my cock.”

Felix nods helplessly into the shirt and prays Sylvain doesn’t notice. The fault in sex is that Felix has spent years and years carefully building up barricades against his own emotions and crafting an unreadable facade to everyone else, but the moment he falls into bed with someone, his body betrays everything. His partners have always been able to read him like a book. Every blush and moan and unconscious movement a simple sentence, a story in how to take him apart. And of course, now he’s a book opened to Sylvain. Sylvain, who has known him since before the barricades and facades. Felix doesn’t want to know what story Sylvain reads from him as he rocks his hips back against the intrusion. He is already certain it will be too close to the truth.

He can’t worry for long. Sylvain’s tongue joins his fingers and wrings a whimper out of him that falls muffled into Sylvain’s shirt. Sylvain himself makes a pleased noise against Felix, unintelligible as his talented tongue laps at the space between his own seeking fingers. Felix is falling apart. What does Sylvain read in the tremble of Felix's thighs, the hitching of his breath? What does Felix reveal in the cry that escapes, resonant in the empty hall, when Sylvain offers gentle, insistent pressure against a point inside his body that leaves him with starbursts behind his eyes? 

Does Sylvain hear everything Felix can't bring himself to say in the pathetic hurried plea of, "Sylvain, I want it. Please, I--"

Sylvain hears something. He must, because Felix isn't empty for but a moment. Sylvain replaces his fingers with the head of his cock and Felix forgets to breathe. His inhale comes in a rush and then stutters out of him, short pants in time to gentle thrusts. Sylvain working himself slowly deeper, until his hips press against Felix and he can go no further. 

"Goddess, Fe… you're still taking me so good." Felix nods again, biting his lip to keep from wailing. "I can feel you shaking. This good for you? Hey, talk to me, Felix," Sylvain coaxes. He runs a gentle palm up Felix's flank, and Felix nearly sobs at the caress. "Did I hurt you? Is this what you wanted?"

He wants Sylvain to move. He wants that length inside to ram home hard on every thrust until he's begging for relief. Felix leverages against the ground to ride back into Sylvain, pushing him deeper. Sylvain lets him, watches with that stare Felix can feel without seeing as he rides Sylvain from beneath him. Then Sylvain holds him tight and stops the motion and Felix could scream from frustration.

"Talk, Felix," Sylvain orders. "Tell me what you want."

"I--" Felix can't say what he wants to. Sylvain isn't his to lay a claim to. "You don't have to be so careful," he says instead. "I'm no porcelain doll. You have me, so take me."

"Not if it hurts you," Sylvain bites. He leans low, driving Felix to distraction with the way his hands slide over every inch of skin they can reach, but only ever teasing when they travel down between his legs, never touching Felix's aching cock. His pulse is thunderous in his ears, and with Sylvain laid along his back it's a miracle Sylvain doesn't feel his heart trying to beat out of his chest. His breath tickles Felix's ear as he whispers, "Tell me what you want, sweetheart. I'll do anything but hurt you."

The pet name is grounding in a way Felix doesn't expect it to be. He doesn't like them, normally. He doesn't even really like it now. But it is anonymous; a hundred others have been called sweetheart and hundreds more will be after him, and Felix reminds himself this is what he wanted. Used, fucked like the woman Sylvain can't even remember. Someone else will be Sylvain's sweetheart after him and he can be forgotten, burned away like the morning mist.

"Don't do that," Felix snaps. "Don't act like you care about any more than a good lay." The pretense of care is what will hurt the most when they're through, a heartbreak worse than any ache in his body. Sylvain was a fool if he thought there was any chance this wasn't going to hurt Felix. One way or another, it was always bound to. "I know you're good, so just show me that. Show me a good time like all your girls, but spare me the pretending. I don't want your bullshit." 

He's met with silence and Felix thinks he's done it this time. Finally said something that will drive Sylvain away. Then Sylvain sighs sharply, his weight heavier against Felix's back for just a moment before he feels the edge of teeth against his ear. "At least you're honest, Fe," Sylvain repeats, bitter as the first time he'd uttered it. "And I should reward that honesty, right? So eager for me to use you… Do you just want to be my whore that bad, Fraldarius?" 

Sylvain isn't teasing anymore. His touch is deliberate, rough like his callused fingers against Felix's throat, baring it to Sylvain's tongue. He passes over Felix's cock entirely to settle his palm over his sack, to push two fingers into his perineum. Massaging his own cock through Felix's body, brushing the ring of muscle stretched around the base of it and leaving Felix whimpering, both aroused and afraid at the thought of being asked to take more. Sylvain is right about him. Felix bucks into him with whatever leverage he can manage like this.

"Saints, you're good, Fe. Yeah, I'll show you a good time. Use you, just like you want. You just show me how well you like it, huh? Let me hear you." Then he moves away, and the air in his absence is cold against Felix's skin. Sylvain takes Felix by the hips and withdraws, smooth and slow, nearly to the tip. There he holds him on the edge. Felix hates that he wants Sylvain to hold him tighter, enough that he'll find bruises where his fingertips dig in. 

Sylvain slams into him and any thought is lost to the wail Felix can't stifle fast enough. He has to brace against the pace Sylvain sets. One hand digs into the dirt, the other presses damp linen to his face in a futile attempt to smother any more telling noises. He gives that up after a while and just digs his nails into the cloth as he rocks back into Sylvain's incorrigible motion. Sylvain better not have any standards higher than loud for what he wants to hear from Felix. Felix can barely string together his own thoughts, and what falls from his lips are the shattered syllables of Sylvain's name and words that  _ may have  _ been in a language he spoke. 

He isn't entirely sure anymore, but at least there was no one to hear such depravity coming from him. Only Sylvain.

Felix presses his forehead to the ground and breathes shallowly into the fabric. Sylvain has his hand in Felix's hair, fallen loose out of it's sloppy tie. He changes pace, easing into something slow but hard, every snap of his hips driving him deep into Felix's body. Felix loves every maddening second. He tries to memorize the feel of Sylvain inside him, the motions he favors, the sounds he rewards. Felix has this one chance to learn, and he'll be as studious in this as he ever was at the academy. Fitting they're still in the Training Grounds. Felix always learned best here.

Sylvain lays along Felix's back again. His hands reach to pet at Felix's stomach, pinch at his inner thigh. His mouth finds places along Felix's spine and shoulders to suckle, but never hard enough to mark. 

The change in angle helps. "There!" Felix yelps as Sylvain's cock drives hard into the same spot his fingers had so cleverly found. The first complete word he has managed in minutes. "Sylvain, again. Right there…" Sylvain complies. He holds Felix to his chest and grinds into that spot relentlessly. Felix is reduced to a writhing mess in moments. 

He leans on his left arm and can't bring himself to care that their combined weight and motion grinds his cheek into the dirt. Sylvain is a wretched tease and Felix needs  _ more _ . He curls his fingers around his weeping cock and shudders at the contact. He knows he's been dripping on his shirt since Sylvain had entered him. Sylvain covers his hand with another, tugs at his earlobe with his teeth and makes Felix gasp. 

"Let me help you with that," Sylvain purrs. Felix lets his hand fall away, lets Sylvain take over. Past his own heaving breath, Felix can hear Sylvain murmur filthy encouragement in a strained voice. Too controlled, too sure. 

Pressure building in his gut, it's the hardest thing for Felix to gasp out, "Wait!"

Sylvain's response is immediate. They both keen in tandem at the sudden cessation of sensation as Sylvain freezes. Above Felix, Sylvain braces both hands on the ground and shakes with the effort of keeping still. Felix hears the intake of breath, a warning before Sylvain asks him a question Felix can't bear to hear. So he cuts him off, gasping for his own breath to say, "You too. Sylvain. Stop--" and he feels the hitch in Sylvain's chest and he draws another breath to finish quickly "--stop holding back. I want you to come with me. In me."

"Fuck." Sylvain drops his head to Felix's shoulder. "It's fine, Fe. Don't worry about it. Showing you a good time, remember?" 

Felix reaches up blindly and grabs a fistful of Sylvain's hair. It's wet still, water or sweat or both, and gritty with dirt from their sparring, but it's worth covering his hand in it to feel the groan rumble out of Sylvain's chest as Felix drags him to where he can meet his eyes.

"So 'anything I wanted' was just something you said and didn't mean?"

"No. I meann _ nn _ \--" 

Felix tugs again. He knows Sylvain meant it. 

"I told you," Felix says, "like you fucked her. Like you wanna put a baby in me." He chuckles breathlessly at his own depravity and the way Sylvain quakes more with each wretched word. "Can't do that if you pull out." With the building pressure eased enough that Felix isn't going to spill before Sylvain has a chance, he rocks back onto Sylvain.

Sylvain sighs, and may mumble something affirmative about Felix's last statement. Felix pays more attention to the motion of his hips, to every wavering sound that Sylvain makes and the interested twitch of his cock inside Felix. He keeps his fingers rooted in Sylvain's hair, a counterbalance to his movement. Sylvain catches on to the rhythm Felix has set. He dusts his palms off on his trousers before he puts them back on Felix's body. It's easy, slow, and almost too sweet. 

Felix basks in it, just for a moment. A moment that he can remember and pretend it won't be over the moment they're spent. Pretend this tryst isn't a means to a happy ending for somebody else when the war is won. 

He tugs Sylvain's hair again to get his attention. Sylvain raises his head from where his lips were busy against Felix's skin, and Felix almost demands Sylvain mark him, stake his claim with perverted bruises. Sylvain doesn't want to claim him, and Felix can't bear to have that minor rejection voiced. So he lets his hand fall from Sylvain's hair and begs, "I want it, Sylvain. Don't hold back."

“Fuck.” 

Felix is proud, at least, that he can apparently reduce Sylvain to mere explicatives. It’s not much, not when Sylvain has set about driving him out of his mind. The training grounds echo with moans in tandem with the slide of skin against skin. Sylvain whispers nonsense into Felix’s shoulder, seemingly incapable of pulling his mouth away. It’s unfair, a war crime that Felix barely got a taste of him, but the angle is wrong to try to kiss him again. 

It’s perfect for Sylvain to grind into his prostate with every snap of his hips, though. 

A pathetic whimper breaks the melody of Felix’s moans when Sylvain puts a hand on his cock again. A few long, slow pulls is all it takes to bring Felix back to the edge. Sylvain is panting in his ear. It takes a second for Felix to hear him past the pounding of his own pulse. “‘M close, Felix,” he says, words slurred drunkenly. “You sure?”

He’s never been more sure of anything in his life. Never more sure that he wants this more than than an end to the war, and never more sure that this is going to ruin him forever. Felix pulls Sylvain’s shirt to his face and breathes deeply. “Yeah,” he sighs. “Mess me up, Syl.”

Sylvain groans and his grip tightens around Felix’s cock. A few hasty pulls and the swipe of Sylvain’s thumb over the head and Felix has to smother the wordless cry that his orgasm pushes out of him in Sylvain’s shirt. Even with his eyes squeezed shut, his vision goes white at the edges. Sylvain’s pace falters. Felix gasps, sharp and just on the edge of pained. Sylvain spills hot inside of him and hotter still is the sting of his teeth in Felix’s shoulder. In the hazy space after orgasm, Felix doesn’t think he should like either sensation as much as he does, but he can’t help but be pleased. 

Sylvain hovers as they both come back to themselves. Felix can feel his breath over the bite, like Sylvain can’t decide whether a kiss to soothe the sting would be welcome. He doesn’t, which Felix thinks is probably for the best. “Sorry,” he mutters over it instead. 

“Don’t be,” Felix replies automatically, then winces silently and hopes Sylvain misreads the fondness in his tone for post-coital bliss. 

Felix can feel the shake of Sylvain’s head, hair brushing cool against feverish skin. “I’m usually more careful,” he says. “I’ve just… never felt anything like that, Fe.”

“That different from a girl, huh?” He lets his tone get sharp again, disbelieving. Armor and barricades. Closing his open book. “Can you move? This is getting uncomfortable.” 

“Wouldn’t know,” Sylvain answers, thumbs rubbing gentle circles over Felix’s hip bones as he withdraws. “I’m not too embarrassed to admit you’re the first person I’ve come inside of, you know.” 

Felix snorts. “There’s a five-year-old sleeping in the dorms that proves otherwise, Sylvain,” he says quietly, sitting up into the space Sylvain vacated. “I’d just forgiven you, don’t start on how you didn’t know her mother or whatever. We both know what it takes to make a kid. Especially a Crested one.” 

“She’s not my daughter.” Felix draws the breath to refute him once again but then Sylvain finishes: “She’s my niece.” 

Felix stares. He must have misheard. With afterglow settled like the fog of drink in his head, he must have imagined, fantasized. 

Felix isn’t nearly imaginative enough to have conceived of this.

Horror dawns like a red sunrise across Sylvain’s face, his own words reaching him through the drunken twilight of his orgasm. Felix sits dumbfounded while Sylvain clenches his jaw and makes no attempt to take back what he said or explain it away. Felix sits frozen and Sylvain quietly moves around him, picking up their mess. 

“C’mon, you can yell at me while we get cleaned up,” Sylvain offers softly. Felix for once doesn’t miss the uncertainty in his voice.

“Why?” he croaks. He shuffles to his feet, ignores Sylvain’s offered hand up, and fixes his clothes. “Why claim her then? I’ve heard what people say about you; why not correct them?” Felix follows Sylvain out, desperate for answers.

“Well, Ingrid’s been calling me a slut since the academy.” Sylvain shrugs, incongruently nonchalant. “It’s not like any of it’s new. I can handle that. What good does it do to tell everyone she’s Miklan’s bastard? For her to find out her real father is gone because he turned into an actual monster? One that I killed?” Sylvain shakes his head and opens the door to the bathhouse. “I’m the only family she’s got, Fe.”

Felix follows silently. His accusations from their fight stick in his throat. Regret isn’t an emotion he’s used to harboring, though it’s boiled in his stomach every time a former academy classmate has met him on the wrong side of his blade. War doesn’t leave space for regret, just a series of brutal ultimatums. “You told  _ me _ ,” Felix says, and he stares at Sylvain for once unburdened by lust as he strips. 

“Well… yeah,” Sylvain answers. “You’re my best friend, Felix. I’ve never been able to lie to you.” The splash of the water as Sylvain moves through the bath is the only sound. Felix is rooted to the spot, silent as a grave. Sylvain never  _ has _ been able to lie to him; Felix has seen always straight through to the truth, from his maltreatment at Miklan’s hand as a child to his careless affairs as an adult. It’s the only reason he believes him now. “Come on, get in. I’ll help you wash the dirt out of your hair.” 

Felix strips automatically, mindlessly. “Does anyone else…?” he lets the question trail off as he steps into the water. 

“Dedue figured it out a few days ago,” Sylvain tells him, “and the Professor has known from the start.” Felix sinks into the water to his chin and lets the heat wash away the discomfort. “Just them. And you,” Sylvain adds, and the uncertainty is back. 

To realize it’s aimed at him is worse than any biting remark Sylvain had ever made to Felix. He sinks deeper in the water.  _ How are you any better than your parents? _ Felix is amazed Sylvain even pays him any regard him after that. He doesn’t deserve the kind of trust Sylvain puts in him. “I won’t tell anyone,” Felix assures with as much sincerity and apology as he can muster. It’s an aching sort of relief when Sylvain lets out a held breath, and the tension drops from his shoulders as he moves toward Felix. Felix has never deserved Sylvain; better for them both that Sylvain gets his chance at a happier ending when things are said and done. 

“Are you going to tell him?” Felix finds himself asking the water. Sylvain hums a question as he cups water over Felix’s head and starts working soap through the filthy tangles in his hair. “This guy you’re gonna marry?” Felix clarifies. “Will you tell him or let him believe you’re a single father? And whois he, anyway?” Better get that out of the way, before Felix lets the domesticity get to him. 

“I’ve wanted to; hard to find a way to say it,” Sylvain says, absently combing the knots out of Felix’s hair. “Bet you can guess who it is though. I’ve given you enough clues by now.”

Felix growls. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Sylvain chuckles. He tugs with teasing intent on a lock of Felix’s hair. “Come on, guess.” 

“I’m not in the mood for games, Sylvain.”

“Give it a good guess and I’ll tell you.”

Fine. Someone they knew as children… “Ingrid.”

Sylvain takes Felix’s head between his hands and tilts him back to see the expression on his face. “Felix,” he says seriously, “I will not tell Ingrid you implied she’s a man--let alone that you think she’d marry me under any circumstances--if you give it an  _ actual _ guess.”

Felix grimaces. It had been a bad guess, a halfhearted answer. He closes his eyes and leans into the scratch of Sylvain’s nails upon his scalp, feigning concentrated thought. His voice cracks over the only other name he can think to supply. “Dimitri?”

Sylvain laughs. “That’s a better guess than Ingrid, at least,” he offers, “but still wrong. Guess again?”

“Saints’ sakes, Sylvain!” Felix exclaims. He whirls out of Sylvain’s touch. “Enough! You think I know every boy you met as a child? You spent half the time at Fraldarius with Ingrid and the Boar, and the other half with your father in Sreng! So if it’s not some Srengi man I’ve never met, and it’s not them, then that leaves--” His voice fails him. There’s only one name Felix can supply that Sylvain both knew as a child and would have made a promise to back then. 

His own. 

The smile Sylvain gives him is too honest, too open, for all that it’s barely present. Felix ducks under the water. Even he doesn’t believe the pretext of washing the suds out of his hair. Through the buffer of the waterline, Felix can still hear Sylvain’s laughter, bright and bubbly. Maybe he’ll just stay down here and drown. Better to drown than face the consequences of his own idiocy. 

Gentle hands pull him to the surface again. Felix floats up reluctantly. “You’re impossible,” Sylvain says. This time, Felix understands the tone for the fondness it is. “You really had no idea? I thought you had me figured out when you kissed me.”

Felix closes his eyes and shakes his head. Goddess, he’s a fool. He just wants to sink again and never come up. 

“You really thought I was going to marry someone else, and you still asked me to have sex with you?” Felix huffs an aggravated sigh and snaps his eyes open. His retort dies on his tongue when Sylvain leans over him and kisses him. “You,” Sylvain adds, voice still dripping affection as warm as the bathwater, “are never allowed to call me a whore again.” 

Sylvain kisses him again, and Felix thinks maybe he did drown. Maybe he passed out on the floor of the training grounds and this is an elaborate, blissed-out fantasy. “Never called you a whore to begin with,” Felix murmurs. “I always knew it was me.” Everything he asked of Sylvain makes his ears burn now. 

“Why did you ask?”

Felix looks up at Sylvain. Sylvain, who has known him before he built his barricades. Sylvain, who could never lie to him, no matter how much Felix has always lied. Honesty is harder when he isn’t emboldened by desperation. He swallows hard and reaches up to thread his fingers through Sylvain’s hair. Sylvain leans into the touch. “Thought if I passed it up then I’d never have the chance,” Felix answers hoarsely. “If I waited until there wasn’t a war to keep me busy, you’d have married someone else.”

“And now?” There’s a desperate edge to Sylvain’s voice. Felix turns to better see the expression of vulnerability painted across Sylvain’s face. He draws lines of water along those familiar features until the dirt of the training ground floor is washed away and the knit of his brow isn’t so tense. Sylvain never looks away, waiting for an answer. 

Felix laces his fingers at the nape of Sylvain’s neck. “I meant what I said, you know. Most of it,” he amends with a grimace. “What I said about wanting you. That was true.” 

He can feel the change in Sylvain's demeanor, see it in the grin that splits his face, hear it in the laughter in his voice. “You wanna have my weird little Crest babies, Fraldarius?” he asks salaciously. Then winces when Felix tugs viciously at his hair. 

Felix is smiling anyway. “I’m the one here with a major Crest, Gautier,” he reminds Sylvain haughtily. “They’re gonna be  _ my _ weird little Crest babies.” 

It makes Sylvain laugh. Felix laughs too, a weight he’d been carrying somehow dropped away. Sylvain drops his chin onto Felix’s head. “Hey, Felix?” Felix hums a ‘yes.’ “Hate to break it to you, but I already have a… a daughter. A daughter with my Crest.” It sounds like he’s trying out the words for the first time, nerves and excitement both tangling them in his throat. 

“Thank Seiros for that,” Felix deadpans. “Between the two of us, no one is getting pregnant.”

“Hey, what happened to ‘better try hard then’?” 

Felix’s stomach somersaults. He’d actually said that, hadn’t he?

No point in taking it back when Sylvain won’t let him forget it anyway. He pulls Sylvain in for a kiss. Deep and heavy, the kind of kiss he’s wanted from Sylvain since he could put a name to his desire. The kind of kiss that takes his whole body to perform, clinging tight to Sylvain while Sylvain holds him close to his chest, reciprocating in kind. The kind of kiss that leaves him turning his face to the heavens, breathless while Sylvain displays some feat of lung capacity with his lips to Felix’s throat.

“Just because it’ll never happen,” Felix gasps to the ceiling, “doesn’t mean we can’t try.”

“Right now?” 

“Insatiable,” Felix scolds. “Maybe I will wait ‘til the war is over,” he says, “since you thought it would take that long in the first place.” 

Sylvain whines. “Cruel, lover;  _ cruel _ .” 

Felix still doesn’t think he likes pet names. Sweetheart is definitely off the table. But ‘lover’... he might like that one. 

**Author's Note:**

> ... and then they definitely fuck again in the bath.


End file.
